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Charleston Library Conference
Knowledge Unlatched: Toward an Open and Networked Future for Academic Publishing
Frances Pinter Knowledge Unlatched, [email protected]
Lucy Montgomery Knowledge Unlatched
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Frances Pinter and Lucy Montgomery, "Knowledge Unlatched: Toward an Open and Networked Future for Academic Publishing" (2012). Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference. http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284315130
This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Knowledge Unlatched: Toward an Open and Networked Future for Academic Publishing
Frances Pinter, Executive Director, Knowledge Unlatched, London Lucy Montgomery, Research Director, Knowledge Unlatched, London
Abstract
Specialist book length publications in the humanities and social sciences (including but not exclusively monographs) are experiencing a crisis. It is clear that the current publishing system is failing both the producers and users of scholarship and neglects many of the opportunities associated with networked culture.
This paper introduces Knowledge Unlatched (www.knowledgeunlatched.org), which aims to improve the efficiency of markets for scholarly books.
Remember Books? Knowledge Unlatched? The focus of the Finch Review and the U.K. government’s response to it is how the existing This paper argues that monograph publishing is in system for publishing journal articles is failing crisis, because publishers have been attempting to scientific communities. Much less attention has replicate print business models in a digital world. been paid to shortcomings of current publishing We suggest that this approach is misguided and approaches for the humanities and social sciences, that more open approaches to content licensing or the growing discrepancies between possibilities and distribution will be key to reinvigorating of access and the realities of dissemination for monograph publishing and stimulating the growth scholarly books. of new markets for scholarly books. Real opportunities exist for publishers in a digital world Scholarly books have been at the heart of the and Open Access licensing will be an important production and dissemination of knowledge in the part of sustainable publishing in the 21st century. humanities and social sciences since the very Libraries have an important role to play in helping earliest days of universities. The deep connections monograph publishing to make a successful between books and scholarship are reflected in the transition towards effective digital business ways in which scholars are trained to carry out and models that facilitate the widest possible access present their work as well as in systems of to scholarly books. academic promotion and the funding and ranking of humanities-based research and the institutions Open Access Books: What Is Already that produce it. Happening? The crisis in book publishing, then, represents a A great deal is already happening in the world of crisis of the gravest proportions for scholarship in open access books. This section briefly examines the humanities and social sciences. It raises this landscape, and explains why a different fundamental questions about the nature of approach is needed. In 2012, the Director of Open scholarly enquiry and communication in the 21st Access Books lists 27 publishers as experimenting century and highlights a worrying lack of with open access book publishing, including some connection between one of the most highly prized of the best known academic presses (Directory of forms of scholarship and contemporary Open Access Books, 2012). Although there are readerships. almost as many models as there are initiatives,
386 Charleston Conference Proceedings 2012 Copyright of this contribution remains in the name of the author(s). http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284315130 only a minority of initiatives are financially self- Academic sells print and e-books through the usual sustaining; a majority operate with a combination channels.3 In some instances the books are of revenue and subsidy from an educational available in both hardback and paperback, or when institution or charitable fund. there is a surprisingly high interest in a book originally published in hardback, a paperback may One of the first experiments in open access be released after a year or two. scholarly books, set up in the 1990s, was the National Academies Press,1 which published free of Bloomsbury’s approach, in effect, mirrors the charge online in PDF and aimed to sell enough print traditional print business model, though at the copies to cover production costs. The results of this same time using the more extensive experiment have been inconclusive. Other discoverability of the free content as a marketing experiments suggest that making books open tool to promote print and e-book sales. So far access may help to increase sales by making them Bloomsbury Academic is selling at least as many, more discoverable. When the HSRC Press in Cape and in many cases more, copies than it would Town put their books on open content licenses in have expected using the conventional closed the mid-2000s, they saw a 240% increase in their model. Authors benefit from expanded print sales (Gray, Rens&, Bruns, 2010). Making readerships and information about usage patterns their content free increased awareness of the titles informs the editors at Bloomsbury Academic of the press was publishing and generated demand emerging trends in their fields. for print copies, especially throughout Africa where cross border trade in books has been particularly Although the Bloomsbury Academic model hard, not least because of lack of knowledge about improves access to scholarly books published on what is being publishing in neighbouring countries open access licences, it does not address the much ibid. deeper structural problems that have plagued monograph publishing over the last several If the traditional supply chain in the academic decades. The only kinds of publishers that are able publishing business has been author, publisher, to make money from monograph publishing in the library, reader then what is striking about the Open current market are very large publishers that have Access book initiatives already in operation is that streamlined operations and charge high prices and they originate from almost all of the parts of the heavily subsidised publishers that can take on a few chain and straddle or bypass elements of the chain titles each year knowing that subsidies will make up in diverse ways. The Gutenberg-e Project sources for losses (as many small university presses do and aggregates content through its competition now). process, paid for by learned societies and foundations while arranging for publication Libraries remain the main purchasers of through Columbia University Press, having Bloomsbury Academic monographs, and the costs negotiated making the content available online for of publishing a title still need to be amortised free.2 This is an excellent way of promoting the across the expected units of sale. Even if all work of young scholars, but is unlikely to be academic publishers adopted the Bloomsbury scalable. Academic model, the same library budgets would be buying the same number of books (whether One of the larger publisher driven experiments is at print or digital). Publishers would still need to rely Bloomsbury Academic. Monographs in certain sub- on sales of a small number of units at high prices sections of the humanities and social sciences have as they do now. The risks of publishing academic been published online on a creative commons non- monographs would remain the incentives for commercial license. The text appears in HTML on publishers to take on fewer titles or to focus their the publisher’s site. At the same time, Bloomsbury
1 See: http://www.nap.edu/ 3 See: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/ 2 See: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/ page/28/faqs;jsessionid=67AD40125F3ADBBA7599C aboutframe.html A663E50064A
Scholarly Communication 387 efforts on more lucrative portions of the market This is how the model works (see appendix for would remain compelling for publishers. notes):
In Search of a New Model: The Role of 1. Publishers¹ offer titles² for sale reflecting Libraries origination costs only via Knowledge Unlatched.³ When thinking about a more efficient approach to 2. Individual libraries select titles either as paying for the publication of monographs, it is individual titles or as collections (as they do useful to return to the question of who currently from library suppliers now). funds this activity. Most of the money that now pays for monographs comes from library budgets. 3. Their selections are sent to Knowledge The role of libraries as the only purchasers of Unlatched specifying the titles to be monographs is closely linked to the difficulties purchased at the stated price(s). that this part of the publishing industry has faced 4. The price, called a Title Fee (set by publishers over the last few years. However, it may also be a and negotiated by Knowledge Unlatched), is key advantage when it comes to developing a paid to publishers to cover the fixed costs of sustainable strategy for facilitating the large-scale publishing each of the titles that were publication of scholarly books on open access selected by a minimum number of libraries to licenses. cover the Title Fee. Libraries have long worked together in consortia 5. Publishers make the selected titles available to secure benefits for the academic communities Open Access (on a creative commons or that they serve. Librarians have also been key similar open license) and are then paid the players in moves towards open access academic Title Fee. publishing. By changing the way in which this 6. Publishers make print copies, e-Pub, and market is coordinated and separating the fixed other digital versions of selected titles costs of publishing from the variable costs available to member libraries at a discount associated with producing premium versions of that reflects their contribution to the Title Fee content, it may be possible to help librarians to and incentivizes membership.¹⁰ maximize the positive side effects of what they are already doing: purchasing scholarly books. By As the number of member libraries grows and the helping libraries to form an international number of titles on offer increases, the price per consortium that pays a single up-front fee to cover title per library decreases. The Title Fee paid to the cost of publishing a book on an open access publishers is a fixed charge. license, and allowing publishers to retain the rights to sell physical copies or value-added e- Publishers that participate in the scheme retain book versions of titles, all of the stakeholders in the usual rights to sell print copies and all digital the monograph market will benefit. formats to non-member libraries and individuals as before. The Knowledge Unlatched Business Model By participating and engaging with the Knowledge Unlatched is a not-for-profit consortium, publishers will gain access to funding Community Interest Company that is piloting a to cover the fixed costs of publishing scholarly global library consortium that will coordinate the monographs in the form of a Title Fee that will be shared, up-front payment of the fixed costs of paid by the consortium member libraries to publishing scholarly books to publishers, publishers. In return for the Title Fee, publishers expressed as a Title Fee. In exchange, publishers will make an HTML version (or other agreed sub- will post titles online on an open content license. optimal version) of specified books available on a creative commons or equivalent open content license.
388 Charleston Conference Proceedings 2012 Because the fixed costs associated with getting the academic publishing ecosystem in a way that the first digital copy will be covered by the benefits everyone. Knowledge Unlatched Title Fee, publishers will be able to sell physical copies of books, or e-book Knowledge Unlatched invites libraries and versions, to consortium member libraries at a publishers to help build a sustainable open future discount. Publishers will also have the flexibility to for scholarly books by participating in the experiment with different approaches and Knowledge Unlatched pilot. Libraries will get new maximizing their income across a wider market. book content from world-class publishers at For example, they might choose to publish books regular intervals over the course of the pilot and in paperback right away rather than hardback or into the future. Libraries will also have access to a develop premium value-added content for which range of additional benefits, including special libraries and individuals may be willing to pay discounts on hardback and e-book formats. extra. In a digital world, discoverability is a powerful Taking a single title as an example, if 400 libraries driver of sales. Making books digitally available on were members of the consortium and the Title open content licenses makes them more Fee was £8,000, each library would pay £20. If discoverable through Internet search engines. This there were 600 members, the charge to each not only helps to generate more sales, it helps library would be £13.33. There are two key scholarly work to connect effectively with relevant variables: the Title Fee and the number of library audiences, regardless of their ability to pay for a members. A small percentage of the Title Fee will copy. This will help to increase the impact of pay for the running costs of the consortium. research in the humanities and social sciences and improve returns on investments in this important Much will remain as before with publishers area of scholarship. competing on the basis of quality publishing with all stakeholders in the academic publishing By building a commercially sustainable market for ecosystem standing to benefit from the results. books that are truly universally open access, readers in all markets, including the world’s Libraries will be able to make their budgets go poorest, will gain the widest possible access to further. They will facilitate opening access and high-quality scholarship. This model is not only a play a major role in helping resolve the problems game-changer in business terms, it holds out the facing academic publishing in the 21st century. By prospect of leveling the playing field when it coming together through such a consortium and comes to accessing the corpus of world pooling library resources to pay the Title Fees of knowledge. selected high-quality titles, libraries can transform
Scholarly Communication 389 References
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390 Charleston Conference Proceedings 2012 Appendix
Detailed Notes on the Business Model:
1 Participating publishers would include university and commercial presses, and others. The initiative is meant to scale and could eventually include a significant proportion of the specialised scholarly monographs currently published.
2 Content would include scholarly monographs and specialised academic titles. A number of straight forward technologies exist to enable publishers to fulfil orders for their titles via the programme, or a partnership with an existing aggregator may be possible. The principal criterion of any fulfilment process would be to keep costs low.
3 The publisher’s price would reflect its fully loaded first copy costs, plus an operating margin. By logical extension, a publisher’s operation would be sustainable were it to sell all of its titles under this model.
4 In the U.S., the likely target audience would be primarily (but not exclusively) the libraries in Carnegie Classes 15–17 and Carnegie Class 23. In the UK and Europe the target audience would be university research and teaching libraries.
5 Knowledge Unlatched to coordinate library participation, probably in conjunction with North American, European, and Australasian consortia. The transaction costs would need to be minimal.
6 To accelerate and simplify the process, an online selection system would allow the libraries to inform Knowledge Unlatched which titles they would be willing to purchase at the stipulated price(s). The library buying group could set the minimum number of libraries required to enable the purchase to be made (e.g., all titles selected by X% or more of the participating libraries).
7 The library review and selection process would provide a market demand mechanism sufficient to ensure that publishers provide books of sufficient quality.
8 There would be no volume discount based on the number of titles selected, as the publishers’ costs are not volume driven—although other incentives will be introduced, such as additional discounts on other products.
9 The OA version could be PDF, HTML, or some other suboptimal digital format. The licensing would be under a Creative Commons or equivalent open content licences. (The degree of restriction, e.g., non-commercial or no derivatives to be specified by the publisher.)
10 The value-added versions of e-books provided to participating libraries would need to provide an exclusive benefit of sufficient value to overcome free ridership. This might include EPUB and/or other desired digital formats, a preferential price on POD or other print editions to member libraries. Other exclusive benefits may include extra metadata/cataloguing, delivering data to library discovery tools. Preferential discounts on other products may be offered.
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